Moira Forbes hosts the video series "Success with Moira Forbes" and "Women to Watch." She is publisher of ForbesWoman, a multi-media platform serving successful women in business and leadership. Representing four generations of publishers, Moira joined Forbes in 2001 in its London office. She graduated from Princeton University.

7 Career Lessons From Billionaire Abigail Johnson

Her name may not have household recognition like other billionaires who regularly make appearances in newspaper and magazine headlines, but Abigail Johnson is arguably the most powerful woman in finance.

The mother of two daughters has kept an extremely low profile as her success has soared at Fidelity since she joined as an analyst in 1988. She rarely engages with the press, but Johnson recently sat down with me to chat about the experiences that have had the biggest impact on her impressive career — and what leadership lessons she’s gleaned from them.

1. Your Job Is Never Done

Johnson is widely thought to be next in line for CEO when her father, Edward “Ned” Johnson III, steps down, but she is far from complacent, satisfied, or even comfortable in her CEO-to-be role. “No matter how senior you get in an organization, no matter how well you’re perceived to be doing, your job is never done,” she says. “Every day you get up and the world is changing, your customers are expecting more from you. Your competitors are putting pressure on you by doing more and trying to beat you here and beat you there.”

She’s up for the challenge. In fact, if the demands of customers and the pressure of competition are the equivalent of a steep mountain, then consider Johnson happily forging a path to the top. “Every day you have to get up with new energy and new ideas to contribute to pushing the organization forward,” she says.

2. Trust Your Instincts

Whether it was what to study in college, which direction to go during challenging times at Fidelity, or even how to manage the logistics of life with kids and a demanding career, Johnson has learned that “lots of people will give you advice…and depending upon how well they know you, the advice might be valid or not so valid.” She’s learned that only you know what will work best for you.

“At the end of the day,” she says, “you know yourself best.”

3. Communicate Effectively

In August of 2012 year, Johnson was promoted from overseeing the asset management business to president of Fidelity Financial Services. The new role required an adjustment in her leadership style as she segued from leading a group she knew inside-and-out to “a bigger, different kind of broader, more operational organization.” “[In my new position,] I had many high-powered sales and marketing professionals who reported to me,” she says. “But I also had thousands of call center representatives reporting to me.” She found that she had to become much more deliberate during her interactions with employees. “I had to learn to communicate to very different types of groups of managers with different orientations, different priorities,” she says. “And that was a real leadership challenge.” She committed herself to the task and has been lauded as an empathetic, confident leader.

4. Get The Little Stuff Right

During the summer in between high school graduation and freshman year at Hobart and William Smith College, Johnson logged her first stint at Fidelity, taking orders from customers. “I was responsible for filling out the forms to correctly put in order the transactions that they were requesting,” she says. “It was a pretty basic job. But it gave me an appreciation of what it was like to be responsible for really important things in people’s lives and making sure that they were always done accurately and correctly.”

5. Surprises Are Never Good

As a leader, Johnson’s style is to ask a lot of questions, always probing people for answers. If it’s going well, why is it going well? If it’s not going well, what do we need to do about it? What are some ideas to try to get us on course so that we can meet those goals? And even possibly were they the right goals? Did we do a good job in our goal setting?

To that end, she requires transparency from everyone around her. “I demand pretty aggressive goal setting and a commitment to measured progress towards those goals because I don’t like surprises,” Johnson says. “I don’t even like good surprises.” She expects all of her managers to be on top of everything happening in their domain and to be able to describe, in detail, how to move the organization forward towards the goals that have been set.

Post Your Comment

Post Your Reply

Forbes writers have the ability to call out member comments they find particularly interesting. Called-out comments are highlighted across the Forbes network. You'll be notified if your comment is called out.